Making French Cleats with Hand Tools

French cleats are awesome to hang working tools easily. The
ability to mix, match, and move whenever needed is great. But, the most
overlooked feature of a French cleat system is in the hanging process.

If you have struggled a lot to hang something pretty big on
the wall then French cleats are the best
option. With a french cleat, you can
simply attach the easy to hold cleat to the wall, attach a cleat to whatever it
is you want to hang and hook them
together.

Handy working tools are needed to accomplish this task. Hand saw meter
gauge, drill bits, planer, etc are mainly used
to make one which is easy to use and also
cheap in price.

And these French cleats also keep the working place mess
free and arranged and it’s also easy to make one.

In order to make one try the following process.Hope this
will be helpful for you all.

Making Process

Step 1: Selecting perfect wood

For the French cleat, first
job is to choose the perfect wood and shape the wood piece.

For this task, randomly
use 8 feet long white oak wood strips. Plane
down one side and joint it nice and flat in order to get a reference surface to
rip off.

Rip these down to 5 inches wide to start by jointing them
good and flat all along one side.

Once it’s done, use
the panel gauge or marking gauge to draw a line specific distance in from the
edge about 4 and ½ or the measurement that seems right and draw it.

Step 2: Sawing and Smoothening the
Wood

After that comes the sawing part. Take the wood piece to the saw bench and rip down through the marked line. Saw bench is used for cutting woods using a hand saw.

After ripping all of the boards to the right length, plane the surface of the wood pieces. Plane them down to the preferable thickness.

You can use a scrub plane. The way it cleans up the surface of the roughly sawn white
oak is just a fantastic job.

Step 3: Making Cleat for Cutting
beveled Wood Piece

After making the surface plane you need to make some cleats
that will hold the wood pieces so that they can help to rip a 22-degree angle or so on the board.

Set an angle at something that looks close to 22 degrees. Lay out all the marks on the pieces so that
cutting out a notch that is a board will then sit in it.

Cut the marked lines and make one first so that this one can
be used to line out making the other one and much more needed.

Once it’s been drawn out cut them down and a cross cut in
the vise. Then stand it up and rip down
the long angle of the triangle.

Clap the board to the vise in such an angle so that the hand
saw runs vertically and thus it makes far easier to cut an angle if you are
actually cutting straight even though the board is twisted to make the angle.

Step 4: Cutting the Wood

Go back to the main cleats and start by drawing a line
straight across the middle of the board and then use the same bevel gauge and
make a line across that center line so that the center of the bevel gauge is at
the same point as the center of the straight
mark.

This way you can cut in a line
across the specific angle whatever the angle is.

As long as the marks line up,
use the marking gauge to draw the line all the lengthwise down the board
and this becomes the line that the saw will follow while cutting.

While cutting , the cleats will hold the wood at that
specific angle and this makes it very easy to cut vertically.

This method is applied to
some purposes. We can easily cut wood
pieces clamping them to the bench vice at the specific angle. This is a normal
sawing.

But we have made cleats to cut the pieces. This is because we can not cut an 8 feet long wood strip just clamping them to
the vise.

We can but we have to divide the wood into two pieces then have
to cut them. This will not be appropriate
for this job.

In the above process,
we can cut long wood strips easily accordingly needed angle. So this process is taken.

After that smooth out the surface and the saw mops with a
hand plane. This will give the cleats a
nice finishing and a perfect look.

Step 5: Polishing the Cleats

After finishing all these
things, polish the wood. Use
boiled linseed oil. Boiled linseed oil is
used here because it gives a perfect

Boiled linseed oil is perfect for shop projects and the
color it brings out in the white oak is just awesome. It’s an easy finish that’s
hard to mess up.

Step 6: Attaching the Cleats to the Wall

For attaching to the wall use countersink and pre-drill
through at the center. Use a countersink
bit in the brace so that the screws sit flush with the wood.

Finding a good countersink bit as easy as it seems but once
you find one you like the world is so much better.

Just put a screw in through the board and into the pine. These bits will hold on the screws really
well and have a serious amount of torque with the braces. It allows to drive it in just the amount you want and.

The project is done. You
can hang your preferable tools over these French cleats. This will give your workplace
a better look.

The making process is too easy. You can easily make one by using simple hand tools near your hand. Try to make one.

Conclusion

French cleats are handy tools made from cheap hand tools. These cleats can hold all types of tools, bigger ones also.

These are easy to make. Only
a few hand tools are used here and the
technique is also easy.